of
the train.

As she laid her eyes on Keith, she stopped with a little shriek, shut
both eyes tight, and clutched Mrs. Wentworth's arm.

"My dear, it's my robber!"

"It's what?"

"My robber! He's the young man I told you of who was so suspiciously
civil to me on the train. I can never look him in the face--never!"
Saying which, she opened her bright eyes and walked straight up to
Keith, holding out her hand. "Confess that you are a robber and
save me."

Keith laughed and took her hand.

"I know you took me for one." He turned to Mrs. Wentworth and described
her making him count her bundles.

"You will admit that gentlemen were much rarer on that train than
ruffians or those who looked like ruffians?" insisted the old lady,
gayly. "I came through the car, and not one soul offered me a seat. You
deserve all the abuse you got for being so hopelessly unfashionable as
to offer any civility to a poor, lonely, ugly old woman."

"Abby, Mr. Keith does not yet know who you are. Mr. Keith, this is my
cousin, Miss Brooke."

"Miss Abigail Brooke, spinster," dropping him a quaint little curtsy.

So this was little Lois's old aunt, Dr. Balsam's sweetheart--the girl
who had made him a wanderer; and she was possibly the St. Abigail of
whom Alice Yorke used to speak!

The old lady turned to Mrs. Wentworth.

"He is losing his manners; see how he is staring. What did I tell you?
One week in New York is warranted to break any gentleman of
good manners."

"Oh, not so bad as that," said Mrs. Wentworth. "Now you sit down there
and get acquainted with each other."

So Keith sat down by Miss Brooke, and she was soon telling him of her
niece, who, she said, was always talking of him and his father.

"Is she as pretty as she was as a child?" Keith asked.

"Yes--much too pretty; and she knows it, too," smiled the old lady. "I
have to hold her in with a strong hand, I tell you. She has got her head
full of boys already."

Other callers began to appear just then. It was Mrs. Wentworth's day,
and to call on Mrs. Wentworth was in some sort the cachet of good
society. Many, it was true, called there who were not in "society" at
all,--serene and self-contained old residents, who held themselves above
the newly-rich who were beginning to crowd "the avenues" and force
their way with a golden wedge,--and many who lived in splendid houses on
the avenue had never been admitted within that dignified portal. They
now began to drop in, e